Modes of communicating information between a transmitter and one or more receivers may be accomplished by terrestrial broadcast, by satellite, and/or by cable. Such communicated information includes analog NTSC television signals, digital HDTV television signals and digital mobile telephone signals, by way of examples. The received signal may be distorted with respect to the transmitted signal due to multipath effects or other signal transmission effects. As known, such distortion may be minimized at the receiver by means of a suitable equalization filter thereat. In particular, so-called deghosting filters may be used as a multipath equalization filter to minimize multipath distortion displayed by a television receiver. One example of such deghosting filter, which is implemented in digital form, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,242, which issued to Dieterich et al. on Nov. 11, 1991, the teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The specific filter characteristics of a deghosting filter or other type of equalization filter of each individual television set, mobile telephone, or other type of communication receiver incorporating such a filter preferably are tailored to that particular receiver in order to be effective in minimizing the distortion of the signal received thereby. However, television sets and mobile telephones are massed-produced items in which cost also must be minimized. What is needed is a single integrated circuit (chip) architecture which permits one or more of such chips to efficiently and economically implement a reconfigurable programmable digital filter having characteristics of a deghosting filter or any other type of equalization filter that may be separately tailored for use in each individual receiver of any type of communication equipment.